Greece, a mastery lesson of Economic Crisis

7 years or more after the global financial crisis broke out, a world crisis that would have required utmost coherence and strongest determination, Greece‘s situation may become someday for economics classes a perfect lesson of what not to do in troubled economic times. The question here is not to establish who is responsible for such unwelcome instability but rather to quickly summarize the context.

First, the political situation: months ago the Greek people elected a leftist government whose posture mainly consists of the opposite of the Troika’s, namely the European Commission (EC), the ECB and the IMF. It means, at least, an ideological – not necessarily practical or possible – rejection of austerity, this way fueling a quite systematic and counter-productive confrontation with Germany, the leading force behind the euro area’s austerity policies.

Second, the financial situation: whatever the efforts of a large part of the Greek people, there is growing sense on the one hand that it’s neverenough to ease Greece’s financial difficulties. On the other hand, impatience is mounting within European partners and creditors about the lack of will on the part of the Greek government to undertake the major reforms needed for the perennial economic rescue of Greece. Among all these people contradicting each other, nobody seems to be completely right or wrong.

Each one of them has a good reason to say what one has to say. In fact, everyone has let the situation worsen so much that it led to a general misunderstanding in which no one’s more audible than the other one. And everyone to ask, when will all this end? Perhaps never – or very badly – if doesn’t emerge a force that is strong enough to say: stop it. Yesterday, Greece paid back 200 million euros to the IMF. Tomorrow, the figure will be 700 million euros. Permanenttension from either side seems not the adequatesolution.